1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing, and particularly relates to an image processing method with a function for generating an easily readable image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been known a digital copier which lays out a plurality of original documents with the same size on an image memory according to a size of an output sheet and prints out the documents (with a reduced layout).
A method of using the digital copier is to perform the setting on a size of original documents desired to be copied, on a size of the output sheets, and on the number of original documents desired to be collected and output for one output sheet and to perform a copy.
However, there is the possibility that when characters of the original documents are small or when a number of pages are collected into one page, since a reduction rate increases in performing a reduced layout, characters after the output are too small to read.
In order to solve this problem, it is considered that techniques disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-374400 are used. That is, it is considered that whether characters with small size (or a character string including a plurality of characters) are included in the document is automatically determined, if the characters are included in the document, only a portion in which the characters are included is enlarged to a predetermined size and the whole document is formed to be easily read.
However, the techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-374400 take notice only of making characters in the document recognizable and therefore, relevance to other objects is not shown in the publication. As a result, in a character object which needs to be arranged corresponding to a graphic object such as a character and a graph scale in a figure and table, a positional relationship between both the objects collapses and the character object reappears as a meaningless layout.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide an image processing method capable of outputting the whole document automatically in an easily viewable state while keeping a meaningful layout relationship between both objects.